Tuesday briefing: What challenges would Ed Miliband face as chancellor?

Summary

In today’s newsletter: Former Reasons to Be Cheerful guests on the challenges facing the presumptive next occupant of No 11 Downing Street Good morning. Does anybody else remember Reasons to Be Cheerful ? The podcast was hosted by radio presenter Geoff Lloyd and Ed Miliband, during what has been unkindly described as his wilderness years, after he stepped down as Labour leader in 2015. I flipping loved that podcast. It started in 2017, soon after my son was born, and I have fond memories of driving across the country with a pooping infant, listening to Ed and Geoff discuss ideas to fix the world. Immigration | A Jamaican man who has lived more than half his life in the UK is facing deportation to his home country in one of the first cases since new anti-immigration measures were announced in last week’s immigration bill. Energy secretary Ed Miliband remains the clear frontrunner – indeed he’s already understood to be developing economic policy for Burnham, a close ally. Shabana Mahmood has been touted as Miliband’s closest rival, although she’s apparently keen to remain in the Home Office (we considered her asylum reforms last week ); New Labour veteran Pat McFadden and foreign secretary Yvette Cooper have also been mooted. That’s precisely the point that my esteemed colleagues on the leaders desk made last week, when they endorsed Miliband for the role: “A government that wants to reshape the country needs a powerful finance minister whose instincts are to repurpose the Treasury, not just reassure it.” I went first to Jonathan Portes , a professor of economic and public policy at King’s College London, who joined Reasons to Be Cheerful in 2018 to talk about shaping a 21st-century welfare state. Although a number of union leaders have endorsed him, Unite’s Sharon Graham has said his fierce adherence to climate targets would put a “ noose around the neck ” of job creation.